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April 6, 2007

G4: Rangers 2, Red Sox 0

The Red Sox couldn't do a thing with Robinson Tejeda. Even though the Ranger starter kept the ball up in the zone, he was also effective at jamming the Boston hitters. The sad result? Sixteen fly ballouts -- most of them popups -- in seven innings.

Hits: JD Drew's line drive off Tejeda in the second that 3B Hank Blalock had no play on; Coco Crisp's double to deep left in the fifth; and Manny Ramirez's line drive opposite field single to right leading off the ninth. ... Only two runners reached second base, no one got to third.

Beef: With two outs in the top of the seventh, Crisp walked. Why didn't Terry Francona pinch-hit for Doug Mirabelli? It turned out that Wakefield was being pulled anyway and Okajima started the home half of the seventh. Why not send up a major league hitter in that spot and have Varitek catch the final two or three innings?

The Rangers managed only three hits of their own (and have a total of only 18 in four games), but were able -- with the help of a walk and a fielding error from Dustin Pedroia -- to score single runs in each of the first two innings. Two of their hits came in the first, with Sammy Sosa getting an RBI on a check swing blooper that fell into right field. Gerald Laird's single scored the second run. Tim Wakefield, Hideki Okajima and Kyle Snyder held Texas hitless after the second inning.

Tejeda was pulled after only 77 pitches (7-2-0-3-1), but Joaquin Benoit and Akinori Otsuka were equally effective. Or Boston was equally lame at the plate. Either way ...

Wow, NESN just stated that Wake will equal the record for continous service of a pitcher with the team at 13 years. You would have thought that there would have been one other pitcher with more than that in the last 107 years. Good for Timmy, one of the good guys.